Our ASSOCIATION ,  in partnership with the FACULTÉS JÉSUITES DE PARIS and  UP FOR HUMANNESS is organizing a conference on the theme :
 
 
Rethinking consciousness in the wake of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Since the Enlightenment, the conscience has left the status of simple moral law framed by religions, to become a philosophical, scientific and then psychoanalytical subject through the unconscious.
The new advances in neuroscience, enriched in particular by quantum physics, allow us to progress even further in our understanding of it and encourage us to  “rethink consciousness”.
This exploration of the XXIst century brings, to the intuitions of the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a new resonance on the origin, the place and the limits of the consciousness in the evolution of our humanity.

  • How to define consciousness ? Is it the ” messenger of God ” described by Cardinal Newman or the neural process of Jean-Pierre Changeux ? Is our brain the expression, in reality, of our unconscious ? Is it the receiver of an external, delocalized and autonomous consciousness? Doesn’t the problem finally lie in the fact that it is a consciousness that tries to think itself?
  • Where do we place the appearance of consciousness in the 21st century ? Which beings are considered conscious  in the animal world ? Is it wise to talk about  ” the intelligence of plants ” ?
  • How dothe intuitions of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin allow us to answer these questions ? Does the transition he describes between individual consciousness and the collective planetary consciousness of the noosphere allow us to understand the recurrent crises and trials and tribulations that our societies go through? 

Speakers:
Chantal AMOUROUXAgrégé de biologie, Secretary General of the Association,
Diane d’AUDIFFRET, Doctor of Practical Philosophy, co-founder of Up For Humaness,
Michel BITBOL, Physician, physicist and philosopher, Director of Research at the CNRS,
Norin CHAI, Veterinarian, writer, Deputy Director of the Menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes at the National Museum of Natural History,
P. François EUVÉ s.j. Professor of Systematic Theology and holder of the Teilhard de Chardin Chair at the Jesuit Faculties of Paris, Editor-in-Chief of the review ETUDES,
Hilaire GIRON, President of the Association of Friends of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
P. Thierry MAGNIN, Doctor in Physical Sciences, Doctor in Theology, General Secretary of the French Bishops’ Conference,
P. Jean-François PETIT a.a. Lecturer in philosophy at the Catholic Institute of Paris,
Emmanuel RANSFORD, Quantum physicist and writer,
Bertrand VERGELY, Agrégé de philosophie, Professor in khâgne,
Dominique VIBRAC, Doctor in history of philosophy from the University of Paris IV Sorbonne.

The exhibition
” Meet Pierre Teilhard de Chardin “
 will also be on display at the Centre Sèvres from November 28 to December 14.